Author: Stephanie Janssen

Pierre Hermé

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

As a young boy, Pierre would wake up to the smell of warm croissants, bread and biscuits wafting through the window from the family bakery below. “To see that you can do something with your hand and you can give life to a cake, that was like magic for me,” says the 55-year-old chef, who would help his baker father in the kitchen. His mother, who managed the shop, warned him against becoming a patissier. “She said it’s too hard and you’ll never find a wife who wants this life,” recalls the Alsatian native.

But the 9-year-old’s mind had already been made up, and a life dedicated to confectionary pursuits wasn’t a choice but a calling—one that eventually garnered him the title of France’s youngest Pastry Chef of the Year, and the distinction of Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in 2007. In 2016, Hermé was named the World’s Best Pastry Chef on the illustrious San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

Fixated on the idea of working in a kitchen, a 14-year-old Hermé enlisted the help of his grandmother to respond to an ad in the local newspaper for an apprenticeship with esteemed patissier Gaston Lenôtre at his namesake Parisian patisserie. Hermé stayed in the role for seven years, determined to learn as much as possible and, above all, to succeed. “I was anxious not to go back to Alsace with my suitcase and say, ‘Oh OK, I failed, I was fired,’ ” he says.

It was here where Hermé’s fascination with modernizing France’s beloved macarons began to take shape. “When I started at Lenôtre I didn’t like the macarons because they were very sweet. They were just two biscuits with a little bit of filling to stick together the two biscuits,” says Hermé, who began to experiment with the traditional formula he had been taught. “I tried to find a way to make the taste more powerful.” The solution, he discovered, lay in adding more garnish in between the delicacy’s two crispy shells, composed of egg whites, sugar and almonds. Going even further off script, Hermé began to incorporate more unconventional flavors and combinations such as rose, pistachio and lemon, deviating from classics like vanilla and chocolate. “I developed a new style of macaron,” says the pastry chef. “There was a big lack of creation in this field.”

By age 24 the rising sweets star was helming the pastry department at Parisian luxury food emporium Fauchon before moving on to consult for the storied macaron brand Laduree. In 1998, Hermé debuted the inaugural Maison Pierre Hermé Paris boutique in Tokyo at the Hotel New Otani, followed by his first storefront in Paris three years later on Rue Bonaparte. In 2008, the first Macarons and Chocolate boutique bowed on Rue Cambon in Paris, dedicated to the brand’s offerings—chocolates, macarons, cakes, ice cream and confectionary gifts—with the exception of fresh pastries and viennoiseries, which are sold at the brand’s flagships (Rue de Vaugirard and Rue Bonaparte in Paris and Aoyama, Japan) and Café Dior in Seoul, South Korea. Today the company has grown to 45 storefronts in 11 countries.

But no matter where you are in the world, the pleasures found inside the carefully curated world of a Maison Pierre Hermé Paris boutique are one and the same. Rows of chocolate bonbons fill the glass vitrines like jewels on display, competing for attention with the house’s Technicolor macarons in best-selling flavors including milk chocolate, passion fruit and ispahan, composed of rose, litchi and raspberry. “I have to give our clients the same experience,” he explains. “It’s about giving some pleasure to these people coming into our shop, taking time to choose a macaron, a cake, chocolates. That gives them pleasure. That’s the only goal.”

Hermé approaches his craft from the standpoint of both an artist and baker. The starting point is a mental image, which he sketches on paper, like an architect drawing up a blueprint. “I can explain to the people working with me in the kitchen how the layers come together,” he says. After imagining the product in his mind, he’ll write down the recipe. At any given moment, Hermé and his team are working on 30 to 40 new creations. Inspiration strikes in many forms, be it a conversation he had or something he saw or read. But most often it’s the ingredients that lend themselves to a creative spark.

When it comes to satisfying his own sweet tooth, Hermé still finds great enjoyment in pastries, whether made by his own hand or by other sweet makers. “It’s always a pleasure [to eat sweets], including when it’s work,” says Hermé, who is especially fond of ice cream. “It’s one category of product I prefer because there’s a lot of taste and texture.” Indeed, gelato and ice cream have been part of his confectionary endeavors from the beginning, reinterpreted in some of the brand’s iconic flavor combinations including ispahan and infinement chocolat.

He’s also a connoisseur of French wines and draws parallels between a vintner’s work and his own. “It’s a very similar craft to mine because it’s a way to combine different flavors and different smells. So there’s a lot to learn from this.” Other passions include art, design, contemporary architecture and travel—the latter of which often translates into new creations in the kitchen. “Traveling always enriches my knowledge about ingredients,” says Hermé, who finds savory foods as inspiring as sweet ones.

His latest obsession is black lemon, which he came across in a little shop in Corsica. A popular ingredient in Persian and Middle Eastern cooking known as loomi, its English translation is a misnomer: The fruit is actually a ripened lime that’s boiled and then sun-dried, turning completely black. “You use the inside, the peel and the zest,” says Hermé of the flavor-packed fruit, which can be used whole, sliced or ground and has a sour profile. The ingredient has already worked its way into Hermé’s macaron lineup, making its debut this winter alongside the seasonal foie gras and hazelnut combo. A black lemon tart is also in the works.

The secret to succeeding as a pastry chef, says Hermé, is knowledge. “When you learn to do pastry, you need to start like a student. That means working in the kitchen but also working at home and doing some reading about the history of the craft, the history of people in the business.” Knowledge of ingredients is crucial, too. “It gives you power and the base to be creative. You can taste the ingredients, but it’s not enough. You need to know about who makes them, where they grow, when it’s in season,” explains Hermé. For the last two years he’s been fixated on flour and the idea that it plays more than just a functionary role in his offerings. “I’m convinced that flour can also bring more taste,” says Hermé, who is focused on discovering the flavor nuances in a broad range of flour varieties, including rice, buckwheat and chestnut.

Hermé doesn’t feel any pressure to maintain his status as one of the world’s best pastry chefs. “It was a very nice surprise and good encouragement, but I did nothing special,” he says. “Every day I work toward making the products in the stores the best we can, so the pressure is always the same.” What he does feel compelled to do, though, is pass down his knowledge to the next generation of pastry chefs. “In all artisanal crafts this is the only way to develop and also enrich them,” muses the patissier. “This is an obsession, and my goal.”
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MASSIMO BOTTURA

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

Massimo Bottura’s first lesson on how to be a good chef happened on the soccer field, not in the kitchen. “It’s not about cooking. It’s about being a leader. You have to learn how to take decisions and read the eyes of the people that are working with you,” says the world-famous Italian toque. “I learned how to do that as a young soccer player at age 15. “I was very good at what I was doing; the team counted on me.”

At 54, the chef—who still knows how to have his way with a futbol—hasn’t stopped putting his leadership skills to the test. As the chef patron of Osteria Francescana, the three-Michelin star restaurant that topped this year’s list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, Bottura is a champion of avant-garde Italian cuisine. On a global scale, he’s revered for his fight against food waste and world hunger.

“Italy is a place kissed by God,” explains Bottura. “We eat to live and we live to eat. It’s in our DNA.” Family meals played a central role in Bottura’s own childhood, with his grandmother and mother dedicating themselves to feeding the extended family, including Bottura’s three brothers and sister—“almost every day it was a party of 20 or more,” Bottura says, recalling Emilian specialties like homemade tortelli and tortellini. And with older brothers who brought a teenage Bottura along on food and wine tours, his culinary horizons continued to reach new heights. One particular memory stands out in his mind: “They forced me to eat oysters, and since then, I’m crazy about them!” (The experience gave way to a dish on his menu, the Tribute to Normandy).

So it’s no surprise that Bottura has always felt a connection to food. Simply put, “The door of the gastronomic world was open,” he says, “and I walked through it.” In 1986, after giving up on the idea of a career in law, a 23-year-old Bottura opened the doors to a small trattoria, Campazzo, on the fringe of his hometown of Modena, a city just shy of 200,000 in the gastronomy-obsessed Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy, which prides itself, among other things, as the birthplace of balsamic vinegar.

The Campazzo years were formative ones for the newly minted restaurateur, who also studied under influential French chefs Alain Ducasse and Georges Cogny during this period. It was here where Bottura also befriended one of his most influential mentors—a local villager named Lidia Cristoni who imparted her traditional pasta-making techniques and years of wisdom garnered from working in restaurant kitchens upon the eager chef (who also credits her with teaching him “humbleness and how to be ready for service.”). “The more I dug deeper into this world, the more my interest became a passion,” says Bottura. “Once you have a passion, you can’t stop. You live it.”

But it wasn’t until the mid-nineties—after Bottura had sold Campazzo and opened his flagship restaurant, Osteria Francescana, with his now wife and collaborator, Lara Gilmore, in Modena—that he began to really tilt the axes of the world of Italian cuisine.  “Sometimes, tradition doesn’t have much respect for the ingredients. So I started looking at the past in a critical, not nostalgic, way, and bringing the best from the past into the future,” says Bottura. He compares the process to a mental image he has of a Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei Wei’s 1995 performance piece “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,” in which he smashes a 2,000-year-old vase. “I’m breaking my past to build the future. That’s the point.”

Following an apprenticeship with Spanish chef Ferran Adria, the visionary behind the now-shuttered elBulli (which also once held the distinction as the world’s best restaurant), Bottura began to approach his craft with a fresh perspective, harnessing traditional Italian ingredients and flavors into new forms. “Ferran was the one who really opened my mind and terms of freedom to express yourself,” explains Bottura, who had already begun to chip away at the cornerstones of Italian tradition with early, innovative dishes like the abstract Cappuccino, a savory riff on an Italian classic using potato and onion paired with balsamic vinegar, and served with a ciccioli frolli powder croissant, and Three Stages of Parmigiano Reggiano featuring three interpretations of its namesake cheese in different textures and temperatures (the current iteration of the dish features five options, including a mousse and a crunchy chip). “I had to show everyone that I really could cook better than their mothers” says Bottura, who was criticized early on in his career for his almost sacrilegious approach. A fusion of art and familiar Italian flavor profiles and ingredients, Bottura’s creations also capture a sense of nostalgia: Memory of a Mortadella Sandwich, for instance harkens back to his school-break lunches through a foam of mortadella

The restaurant is not just an ode to avant-garde Italian cuisine, but also Bottura and Gilmore’s shared passion for contemporary art: works by Bosco Sodi, Gavin Turk, Francesco Vezzoli and Duane Hanson dot the walls of the 12-table restaurant. Bottura’s love of music makes appearances on the menu in the form of dishes such as the black cod-driven Tribute to Thelonious Monk, an ode to the famed jazz pianist, and Autumn in New York, a dedication to Billie Holiday’s jazz song in the form of a vegetable and foie gras medley with a pour-over broth. (You’re as likely to find Bottura sourcing original Bob Dylan and BB King vinyl at the monthly local antique market as you are combing the farmers’ market for in-season produce.)

In 2002, the restaurant was decorated its first Michelin star, followed by a second in 2006, and a nearly unattainable third in 2012. In 2011, the International Academy of Gastronomy anointed Osteria Francescana the number one restaurant in the world.

Bottura doesn’t feel any pressure to maintain his status as one of the world’s most recognized chefs; he does, however, feel an obligation to use his influence to effect change. “It’s very important that I use my position to raise my voice, to move the spotlight from me to others. It can be farmers, cheese makers, or poor people. We confirm the problem, then we solve it using my spotlight,” he says. Case in point: when earthquakes struck his native Emilia-Romagna in 2012, Bottura devised a risotto cacio e pepe recipe to utilize thousands of wheels of Parmigiano Regiano that had been damaged in the disaster. The dish became a national sensation. “Italians in general are extremely, extremely social. We give our best moments when we are hit by something. When we need it we are extremely social and we care a lot about the others,” explains Bottura.

That same philanthropic spirit also shines through in Food for Soul, Bottura’s non-profit that turns the spotlight on food waste and hunger. During the 2015 ExpoMilan, Bottura debuted Refettorio Ambrosiano, turning an abandoned 1930s theatre into a modern-day refectory in collaboration with a team of artists, architects designers, and sponsors. Sixty chefs from around the world came together cook for the city’s underserved, using leftovers.  Over a five-month period, the team—which included the likes of Adria, Ducasse, Rene Redzepi and Mario Batali—transformed 10 tons of food waste from the Expo into 150 healthy meals a day.  “I want the most influential chefs in the world to understand the mentality of their grandmothers,” says Bottura of the concept, which teaches chefs not to throw anything in their kitchens away.

“After Milan, we received so many requests to open Refettorio in Tokyo, in London, everywhere. I said to Lara, ‘how can we do this?’” The Food for Soul foundation was born, and during the 2016 Olympics, Bottura, Gilmore, their two children, Alexa and Charlie, and another star-studded list of chefs headed to the host city of Rio de Janeiro to launch the next incarnation of his modern-day soup kitchen, Refettorio Gastromotiva. “[The chefs] trust me,” he says. “They know who I am and why I am doing this. During my 31 years of experience in this work, I’ve built credibility, and every single chef who came to Milan said, ‘I want to come back for Rio.’”

Brazil was much harder than Milan, he says, because he saw “things he couldn’t imagine.” But he was ready for them. “[These people] don’t have hope, and with [Refettorio Gastromotiva], they had something incredible to wait for. Because at 6 p.m., they could spend a couple of hours in a place that treated them like human beings.”

And whether he’s serving luminaries like Mark Zuckerberg and Robert De Niro, or children on the streets of Rio, Bottura’s approach is one and the same: “For me, it’s like I’m giving everything to everyone, because this is my passion,” he says. His ultimate goal, he says, is to work towards reducing a projected number of 860 million starving people in the world in 2050 by half. “If I can open the minds of people, of companies, of politicians, maybe we can do it,” he says. “Open 10, 100, 1,000 Refettorios around the world.”

At the end of the day, projects like the Refettorios can’t exist without Osteria Francescana. “It’s a laboratory of ideas. It’s where we create culture, and culture brings knowledge and a constant sense of responsibility.” The next step, he says, is bringing spirituality into the mix. How? He doesn’t know yet. What he does know is the feeling of excitement and responsibility he felt in Rio. “I always keep the door open for the unexpected, because it’s the most amazing thing ever to be surprised,’ he says. “That’s the secret of a great life.”
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NORMAN LEAR

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Writer and producer Norman Lear has been called a one-man Golden Age of Television, responsible for such hit ’70s shows as All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons and Good Times. Tackling such tough subjects as racial bigotry, homophobia and abortion, Lear and his colleagues enlarged the world of TV’s sitcoms and drew huge audiences. He had three of the top four shows on the air during one season, five of the top nine on another.

Now 94, Lear is still developing new television shows and still dedicated to the social activism that has long accompanied his television work. He launched People for the American Way to challenge the mixing of religion and politics and the University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center to analyze the impact of entertainment on news and culture. A World War II veteran who flew 52 missions, he later purchased a July 4, 1776, copy of the Declaration of Independence for $8.1 million, then sent it across America with historical exhibits and voting information.

BARBARA ISENBERG: When your World War II tour of duty ended in 1945, did you have a career plan?

NORMAN LEAR: As a kid of the Depression, with parents who were out to lunch, I needed a role model, and that was my Uncle Jack, who used to flip me a quarter. I wanted to be an uncle who could flip a quarter. He was a press agent, and I’m not sure I knew what a press agent was, but I wanted to be him. When I was overseas, I wrote a one-pager announcing my release from the Air Force and how brilliant I would be as a press agent, and I sent it to Uncle Jack. He sent it out, and I got a job in New York writing amusing things about stars and Broadway shows for newspaper columnists.

BI: How did you make the leap from press agent to comedy writer?

NL: I moved to California, which is where I met Ed Simmons, who wanted to be a comedy writer, and that turned my attention to comedy writing. One night, our wives were at the movies, and we wrote a parody of The Sheik of Araby. There were a lot of nightclubs around, and we sold it for $40 to the first club we went to. That was what I made in a week trying to be a press agent and selling door to door. We wrote a piece for Danny Thomas that he did at Ciro’s nightclub, and a major agent in the audience called us. Soon we were writing for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and we did TV specials for people like Jack Benny and Danny Kaye.

BI: Did you ever think you’d write for television?

NL: No. There was no television when I was thinking about making a living. My mother heard me singing in the shower and thought maybe I could be a cantor, but I was never asked by my parents what I wanted to be.

BI: What were some of the shows on TV when you started out?

NL: There were The Beverly Hillbillies, The Flying Nun, Petticoat Junction and Father Knows Best. The biggest problems an American family faced in those shows were the boss is coming to dinner and the roast is ruined or mother dented the car and how will the kids help her keep the news from daddy.

BI: How did All in the Family come about? You and your producing partner, Bud Yorkin, were working mostly on movies by that time.

NL: Bud was making a Pink Panther film in England, saw the U.K. television series Till Death Us Do Part, about a bigoted father and his liberal son, and told me about it. I was getting divorced, I was in great difficulty financially and in live television you owned nothing. I knew I had to do something that had reruns, and I was thinking about that when Bud mentioned Till Death Us Do Part. Within two weeks, I had written 82 pages of notes for a show that became All in the Family.

BI: You borrowed a bit from your own family experiences when you were writing All in the Family, didn’t you?

NL: Well, my dad did have a floor model Atwater Kent radio, and he controlled the radio dial from a red leather chair next to it much like Archie would control the TV dial later. He used to call me “the laziest white kid he knew.” And when I screamed at him that he was putting down a race of people just to call his son lazy, he would yell back, “That’s not what I’m doing, and you’re also the dumbest white kid.” He would also tell my mom to stifle herself, just like Archie told Edith.

BI: When the first episode ran in January 1971, CBS started the show with a disclaimer and hired extra switchboard people to deal with viewer responses.

NL: There was no subject we did that was not an everyday event in our family or our extended family or in the house up the street. But people would say to me, “If you have a message, pal, there’s Western Union. You have no right to use television.” I used to say, “That’s not what we’re doing. We’re trying to bring an audience to its knees with laughter.”

BI: Are you saying that shows like All in the Family and Maude, with their story lines about racism, attempted rape and other rarely discussed topics, weren’t written to inform and persuade?

NL: It was years later when I began to accept that there was a message. I’m a grown man with strong feelings, and of course it’s reflected in my work. But there were messages on TV before, too. Their message was that there were no economic issues, no moral questions, no problems. That is also a message.

BI: How do you see America today?

NL: I see America the way Dwight Eisenhower warned us it could be in his farewell address, talking about the possibility of a military-industrial complex taking us over. I feel that is exactly what is choking us right now, delivering the fruits of everybody’s labor to the 1 percent. So many people in our country felt hopeless to such a degree that they would throw their weight behind a Donald Trump.

BI: Any thoughts about how America came up with two such polarizing presidential candidates in 2016?

NL: It was the American people’s way of saying: “This is the kind of leadership you give us? Take this.” And when I say that, I’m not just thinking of politics. I’m thinking of Wells Fargo, the pharmaceutical company Mylan’s EpiPen price increases, the airbags from the Takata Corporation—I’m thinking of leadership across the board.

BI: You recently were an executive producer on the Epix TV series America Divided and investigated housing inequality. What surprised you most about what you found out?

NL: What surprised me is that I could learn what I learned and still sleep well after learning it. I don’t know how to explain caring as much as I think I care and doing as much as I think I do and realizing now and again how little it is. Then again, every little bit matters.

BI: Your popular 1975 show, One Day at a Time, reimagined with a Cuban-American family, is set to air early next year on Netflix. What is the status of your proposed TV show, Guess Who Died, set in a retirement community?

NL: We’ve had more interest lately, and my guess is that it will happen. The fact is that older people are the fastest-growing demographic with the most expendable income. And we watch a lot of television.

BI: It’s your demographic, of course. Do you feel 94 years old?

NL: I am the peer of whoever I’m talking to. If I am talking to a 15-year-old, that’s who I am. If I’m talking to a 50-year-old, that’s who I am. I see too many 75-year-olds who seem much older than I feel. I’m aware I’m an older person, and I wish my back didn’t hurt and my legs didn’t weigh 1,000 pounds. But I go to bed at night and can’t wait for the first taste of coffee in the morning.

BI: What do you think accounts for you not feeling your age?

NL: I think it’s living in the moment and being aware that whatever I’m doing, I’ve spent all my  life getting there to do it. Like this interview. It is an indisputable fact that this interview took me 94 years, some weeks and some days to get to. And for you and everyone who reads it, it took every split second of your lives. So is the moment important or not?  How can anyone deny the importance of any moment that took all of your life to get to?

 

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CAROLINE DIANI

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Caroline Diani recently came across a photograph of herself as a 7-year-old school girl. She was at home in Northumbria, England, where she grew up. “I had a rabbit at that time and I had a dog,” she says. “I also had a hamster.” In the photo, she poses with all three. The hamster belonged to her class at school, and it was her weekend to care for it. “I wore a bow tie to celebrate the occasion. I wore the bow tie all weekend,” she remembers. “I loved creating occasions to celebrate, even if they seemed insignificant to a lot of people.”

Diani has been trying to capture that childhood passion for the off-the-cuff occasion in the midst of running her 14-year-old DIANI Boutique. She’s been losing herself in curiosities; she recently returned to painting, an art form she’d pursued in school, and started living part-time in upstate New York, where the historicity and weather contrast her beach-town base of Santa Barbara. “I’m trying to go back to the things that made me feel alive when I didn’t have as much pressure,” she muses.

A circuitous path brought her to Santa Barbara and to her boutique, which carries Chloe, Isabel Marant and other curated brands and has gradually expanded to include a thriving online business and home line, DIANI Living. Born in Kenya and raised in Northumbria, Diani had her first taste of coastal California in 1995, when she spent a summer in Ventura, interning at Patagonia. She returned to London, graduated with a fashion design degree and worked first in freelance design, then fashion PR. When her father became ill and she needed more flexibility in her schedule, circumstances conspired dramatically in her favor. “My boyfriend at the time had been buying me scratch cards,” she recalls, “and I never ever scratched them off, and then, this one time, I did.” She won 25,000 pounds, a sizable sum at the time. After splitting it with her then-boyfriend, she bought a small flat, fixed it up and resold it. For the next few years that became her vocation: meeting with contractors, renovating houses, then re-selling them.

She thought she would continue in the same vein in 1999, when she moved to Santa Barbara. But here, there weren’t as many fixer-uppers—she still lives in the mountain home she bought then—and she longed to put down roots. She couldn’t imagine making the long commute to work in L.A. fashion. Then she fell “madly in love,” her words, with a quaint storefront on State Street in downtown Santa Barbara.

“It had beams, and so much character,” she says. She had no business plan. “The landlord just took a chance.” Years later, the space, with its attractive wooden door and tastefully minimal aesthetic, remains her headquarters, though it’s often when she leaves that she finds inspiration.

“I have a freedom when I’m traveling that I crave,” she says. On buying trips to New York, the East Coast or to Southern antique shows, she has no set schedule. “I’m walking around, meeting with people. If I have an hour to spare and I’m next to an art gallery, I’ll walk around it. I’ll go see theater at night.” People-watching, too, has become a stimulating hobby. In low-key Santa Barbara, women often come into the shop in sweats, after yoga or before picking kids up from school. She rarely sees them in the clothes they buy from her. On the streets in London, New York or Paris, women dress to be seen.

“I just will catch a glimpse of somebody and it will free up my imagination,” she says. She’ll think, “Who is that person; why are they dressed that way; where are they going?”

She finds this more interesting than looking at clothing on runways or showrooms. What people wear, and do, in their daily lives is more interesting than staged events—better still to hear their stories. She married three years ago, to actor and photographer Jeffrey Doornbos, and their choice to buy a 400-year-old home in upstate New York has brought different narratives into her life. People share anecdotes on the train; the man she hired to repair the chimney offered up his knowledge of historic masonry. “Growing up in England, I took for granted that you were surrounded by history,” she says. “Even going into a pub, you’d sit down next to an old man and he would tell you his life story.” She has also started dreaming of having animals again; perhaps a farm life could somehow be incorporated into DIANI Living. Diani observes that most of the creatives she admires —like the innovative florist Saipua, who grows her own flowers and raises sheep—approach their work holistically.

“I’m not really interested in fashion, purely,” she says. “I find distasteful the throw-away nature of it. I don’t like the idea of the next greatest thing or being on trend all the time. It’s exhausting to me. But I love the idea of creating something that has meaning and is authentic.”

 

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SWIZZ BEATZ

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If you’ve turned on the radio in the last two decades, you’ve heard the work of Kasseem Dean, aka Swizz Beatz. Since breaking onto the music scene at age 20 with DMX’s “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” in 1998, the now 38-year-old überproducer has cemented his place in music history, racking up accolades for his work with everyone from Whitney Houston and Gwen Stefani to Jay-Z, Drake and his own wife, Alicia Keys. Not bad for a kid from the South Bronx.

But Swizz’s talents transcend the hip-hop landscape, and to define him by his musical accomplishments is to merely scratch the surface of this modern-day Renaissance man. Never one to rest on his creative laurels, this devoted father of five is just as likely to be found laying down tracks with Kendrick Lamar as dreaming up a collaboration with a major fashion brand or scoping out emerging artists for an art show.

Chalk it all up to his natural instincts as a producer. “Everything I do is putting people together,” says Swizz. “That’s where I have the most fun.” That also applies to his latest endeavor, No Commission—a platform designed to promote fine artists and help them sell their work without any middlemen or fees, allowing them to take home 100 percent of the proceeds from their sales. “It’s like, what if I can create an art fair that’s 100 percent for the artists, because at all these fairs, the galleries win, the collectors win, the fair wins and the artist has got to kind of find their way home,” says Swizz, who conceived of the project not only as a way to empower artists but also to connect them with their buyers.

“If you ask the average millennial of the ways to get into art, they all have different answers. And none of those answers would have been heard of five years ago—maybe even two years ago,” says Swizz, noting the similarities to the music industry. “When I started music, you didn’t have the access of iPhones and all the different ways you can reach your fans now, and all these cool apps and social media platforms,” he says. Case in point: his 16-year-old son, Prince, who turns to music-streaming service SoundCloud to find new artists. “I was like, so you don’t go on iTunes? He’s like, ‘No, that’s too commercial.’ ” The rules had changed.

 

Swizz-Beatz-1
Meanwhile, Swizz was already starting to witness firsthand the power of social media through his own Instagram, where he would regularly promote up-and-coming artists to his 1.5 million followers. “They would write me back and say, ‘Man, thank you. I just sold out my show and I’ve got galleries fighting over me,’ ” recalls Swizz. “I thought, OK, cool. I have some power here that I can free some artists with.”

Swizz launched the No Commission Art Fair in 2015 during Miami’s Art Basel, where 35 participating artists sold more than $1 million in artworks. That success story was repeated in the fall of 2016 with the inaugural No Commission Art Performs, a free four-day celebration packed with musical performances, art showcases and installations, held in his native South Bronx. Featured artists ranged from established talent such as Kehinde Wiley to up-and-comers like So Youn Lee and Delphine Diallo. “Merging music with art and culture and fashion and all those things just created an energy where people were like, ‘I’m going to buy a piece,’ ” he says. Ninety-eight percent of the artists sold works, and 70 percent of the purchasers were first-time art buyers.

“I’m a Virgo—we want to please everybody,” says Swizz. “We want to do a lot of cool things for people, so I am happy when other people are happy, too,” he says, citing the success of the No Commission artists as an example. But happiness for him also means spending time with his wife and children, which he prioritizes above all else. “I think the balance to making everything work is just making everything work. You know, you can come up with a thousand excuses. Everybody’s busy. It’s like, ‘No, this is what I’m doing and that’s that.’ Something has to take a loss. It should be your family as little as possible,” says Swizz, who has two children, Egypt Daoud and Genesis Ali, with Keys. “We have rules where we can’t go two weeks without seeing each other. You can be wherever, if it’s two weeks I’ve either got to come to you or you come to me because you have to maintain some type of balance, because we both live busy lives. We both have big missions to fulfill.”

The greatest lesson of marriage and fatherhood, he says, is one word: communication. “We never raise our voice in eight years at each other. Not one argument, not one fight. Why? Because the communication is, ‘Let’s have dinner tonight and go over a couple things,’ rather than not communicating and building up 15 things to talk about.”

As a convert to Islam, religion is a guiding principle for Swizz, who is constantly learning life lessons from the people around him. That could mean a stranger with whom he had a random, two-hour conversation (“Some of those people I never saw again in my life, but those lessons that they told me and explained to me stuck with me a lot”) or his artistic heroes, whom he describes as “all of the people that had a dream and believed in it and didn’t give up because of what other people said.” Ultimately, he says, it’s all about taking a stand: “If we don’t fight for something we’re going to have nothing. How are we going to make change that you want and how are you going to be responsible for the change that you want?”

For Swizz, that doesn’t mean just blazing trails in music and art. What’s most important, he says, is finding ways to positively impact the lives of others.

“Forget a Grammy. That’s something that you could leave on the table. That doesn’t continue doing anything. It’s a statue of a moment, but if you can create something that keeps on giving, then that’s the truest blessing.”

 

 

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JULIAN SCHNABEL

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

It was 1995, and we were having one of those awkward folded-linen-napkin lunches in the middle of a Volvo commercial shoot. Our host was on the phone, and there was so much gossip going on around the table that no one seemed to notice, until he handed Herb the phone and there ensued that somewhat graceless pregnant silence while everyone tries to conceal their curiosity, but you could feel the questioning glances. Here we were, a family more comfortable on the beach, pushing the boundaries of appropriate behavior in the very conservative world of surfing, surrounded by commercial-industry professionals. Who in the hell would want to talk to Herb?

On the other end of the line: Julian Schnabel, who was regaling Herb with stories of their first meeting at a surf contest in Brownsville, Texas, in 1967, where a 16-year-old Julian lived with his family. There was laughter and true joy as they reminisced; theirs is one of those rare friendships that seem to pick up as though they had just spoken yesterday. Time was short—Julian was in production on Basquiat and the cameras were ready to resume shooting on the commercial we were working on. They exchanged numbers and as soon as our business commitments were complete, Herb got in the studio to send Julian the big-wave surf footage he had requested for his film.

 

 

Julian has a true passion for the art of surfing; ours is a bit more jaded being in the business, but the romance of the early years and the characters who make up the sport’s history have proved a great bond around which to build our mutual friendship. Julian’s generosity of spirit and encyclopedic knowledge of art, movies and literature was completely intoxicating to me. On one of our trips to his home in Mexico, Herb laid Julian’s carefully chosen nautical charts down on the yard’s raked gravel, with weather-polished rocks anchoring the corners and containers of mixed oil paint placed within easy access of Julian’s brushes, which were attached to long sticks so he could stand erect and achieve what he felt was the proper perspective. Dressed in a sarong, sleeveless plaid shirt and yellow-tinted horn-rimmed glasses, he painted his Navigation Drawings with a muscular abandon that was utterly amazing. The wind started to gust and blew sand into some of the paint, but Julian was undaunted as he made his marks on one chart after the other, sometimes circling back to add on or moving forward by skipping one or two. It was a creative dance choreographed by a master, and with the final stroke I knew I had been a witness to magic.

 

 

In the evenings under the thatched roof they would relive every wave ridden during the day, as surfers tend to do, and discuss how their performance could be made better with a little tweaking in board design. Julian created a logo for the boards that Herb shaped, which they would exclusively ride. Although technically long boards, these are not “logs,” which the length typically refers to; these are high-performance, down-rail, ultra-responsive, lightweight flying machines, for going fast and hanging high in the wave before sideslipping down the face. They were completely black, with a round logo laminated on the deck 24 inches from the nose—a painting from Julian’s Big Girl series along with the words “Blind Girl Surf Club” written in bold white lettering along the stringer on the bottom of the board. Each a custom-made work of art for peak surfing experience. It wasn’t long before a few other good friends were included in the clique, which had the feeling of a surf team from back when Herb first started competing in the mid ’60s. Their motto was adapted from an old Groucho Marx quote—“I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member”—and with the likes of Christian and Nathan Fletcher, Vito Schnabel, Nathan Webster, Bruce and Andy Irons, Dustin Barca, Danny Fuller and John John Florence, the boards and coach jackets with the same logo are starting to be seen, recognized and coveted.

 

 

Julian and Herb plan surf trips whenever possible, and whether it’s Montauk, Mexico, Maui or Spain, it doesn’t matter—Julian always has a space to paint, Herb spends his time taking photos, and they surf when the tide is right. When most of the sport’s enthusiasts in the Northern Hemisphere are finalizing plans for their first trip into the frigid white winter land of their favorite ski resort, surfers from the rest of the globe are packing their quivers and starting the annual migration. Destination: the 7.5-mile strip of coral-sand beach on the north-facing side of the small island of Oahu known as the North Shore. From Haleiwa to Velzyland, there isn’t a place on the planet that can boast as many classic surf breaks in such a concentrated area, or as many surfers, photographers, writers, industry honchos, tattoo artists, boogie boarders, groupies, tourists and every manner of hanger-on that comes to experience the Triple Crown event where the WSL Surfer of the Year is crowned.

 

 

With the who’s who of the sport gathered on the beautiful strip of pristine beach, the waves thundering over the shallow coral reefs while the greatest tube riders and aerial masters jockey for position, to the delight of the screaming crowds; it is here, in the heart of hardcore surfing that Herb and Julian meet yearly to enjoy the shared passion for surfing that started on the beach in Texas so long ago. It’s in this environment where Julian paints surfboards for friends, helps Herb with the annual Wave Warriors photo shoot and paddles out for a few waves at Rock Point that he has a chance to enjoy the “surf life” for a couple of weeks. Surrounded by characters who risk their lives riding waves no sane person would paddle into, with some having explosive temperaments that belie their seemingly easygoing demeanor, Julian seems casually at ease while he and Herb enjoy the greatest surf show on Earth.

 

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Posted in Art

Greg Blanc

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

Greg Blanc starts his morning ritual with a 35-minute moonlit motorcycle ride between his hilltop home in Malibu and Gjusta in Venice. “It’s the best commute in L.A.,” says Blanc, who would arrive at 3 a.m. to supervise the bake-off when the cult artisanal bakery and deli first opened its doors in 2014. Now with a team of trained bakers in place, Gjusta’s GM and co-head baker pulls up at sunrise, greeted by the aroma of dozens of freshly baked breads wafting from the facility’s nine ovens. By the time Blanc has sampled the first batches, filled the display cases with pastries and prepared foods and stacked the shelves with still-warm loaves of sourdough country, ciabatta, baguette, hemp nori and sprouted rye, the day’s first customers are already beginning to form a line.

 

 

For Blanc, the kitchen is familiar territory. Raised in the French alpine city of Annecy, he was born into a line of bakers, restaurateurs and hoteliers who not only passed down the tradition of bread-making, but more importantly, the knowledge of what defines a good baker: “Caring about what you do, and having the strength to make the best product you can, and being consistent,” says Blanc, who worked his way through prestigious bakeries in France and California before settling down in the Los Angeles area.

But it wasn’t until 2010, when Blanc befriended fellow surfer Travis Lett, the chef and driving force behind beloved Venice restaurants Gjelina and GTA, that he began to revisit his artisanal bread-making roots. “We had too much demand [for bread] at Gjelina for the two small ovens,” says Blanc, who had begun working at GTA after taking a three-year break from the culinary world to work in the apparel industry with his wife. “Gjusta was supposed to be a small bakery.” Blanc was tasked with growing the bread program without sacrificing quality.

 

 

But as Blanc has learned over the years, nothing Lett ever does is small. Fast-forward to present day, when the bakery, deli and cafe is now a neighborhood institution, servicing its own discerning customers as well as those of the Gjelina Group and more than 15 local restaurants. Almost everything is crafted in-house, from the pickled produce and the smoked and cured meats down to the nut milks poured at the coffee bar. The bakery offerings have expanded from three breads to nine, and on any given weekend, Blanc estimates that he and his team bake anywhere from 500 to 800 loaves. “If you have bad bread one day, that customer might not come back. You have to be consistent. And I think that’s why people love us,” he says.

Blanc’s work at Gjusta is more than a job. It’s a lifestyle. “Some people are happy sitting in front of a computer every day, but when you grow up in an industry like this, you need the energy. You live your life differently, and it’s an adjustment for your friends,” he says. “What drives me is the food. Do what makes you happy.”

 

 

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AUDREY MCLOGHLIN

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

“I’ve just been working ever since I moved here,” says Audrey McLoghlin, reflecting on her past 15 years in Los Angeles. She sits on a couch in the showroom of Frank & Eileen, the company she founded eight years ago and named after her beloved, long-married Irish grandparents. “So this beautiful showroom is my community,” she continues. The carefully curated space, located on the top floor of the century-old Lady Liberty Building on Los Angeles Street downtown, looks intentionally quaint, like it was imported to Los Angeles from somewhere quieter. There are traces of the American south, where McLoghlin spent most of her youth, and of countryside in Ireland, where her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins lived. Walls of antique windows and gray wood paneling separate rooms. Cake and favors are leftover from a birthday party for a staff member. Plants fill tall wooden shelves. Long wooden tables stretch across the central hallway, and in a dining nook hangs a wall work the size of a museum-ready painting, made of Frank & Eileen fabrics but slightly reminiscent of German artist Cosima von Bonin’s patchwork compositions.

When she arrived in Los Angeles, McLoghlin knew little about fashion. She certainly didn’t know she would design a line of shirting that merged luxurious Italian fabrics with a casual California aesthetic and an Irish love story.

A graduate of Georgia Tech’s engineering program, she had worked at a tech start-up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the Dot Com boom. “I was one of the only female software engineers,” she recalls. “It was a wild time.” Then the bubble burst, the tech industry crashed, and she decided to move to California to learn about manufacturing.

“I knew I wanted to build something,” she remembers. “At that point, I just had no idea what that meant.” Within weeks, she was working with an accessories designer, learning the design business. Within a year, she had opened a high-end boutique in Manhattan Beach named Una, after her mother. Within four years, she founded Aude, a multi-brand wholesale company that would keep her Una stores fully stocked. Frank & Eileen came to her by accident. She had gone to visit a manufacturer to discuss a tissue-weight cashmere concept. “He put me into a room and said, ‘Wait here for a minute,’” she remembers. “He left me in there too long and I started snooping, which is my favorite thing to do when I’m left alone.” She found an old book of Italian menswear fabrics, made by a family-owned mill in Bergamo, Italy. By the time the manufacturer returned, she had lost all interest in cashmere. By the end of 2008, she was making men’s and women’s shirts with the 140-year-old Italian mill.

Now, she travels at least twice yearly to Bergamo and finds inspiration in the mill’s archives. She also travels routinely to Japan, which became one of Frank & Eileen’s largest markets within a year of the company’s launch, much to McLoghlin’s surprise. She’d done no targeted marketing, only sold shirts out of Ron Herman’s Tokyo store. “Audrey,  you’re famous in Japan,” Ron Herman called to say when he went over for the opening of his second store. “You have to get over here.” She describes a funny afternoon in Tokyo, going store to store. None of the stores had her shirts. Finally, exasperated, she asked through a translator what they were doing. Apparently, most of the city was sold out of Frank & Eileen. “I asked, ‘Why is Frank & Eileen so popular?’” says McLoghlin, who talks about her success as if it’s something she luckily stumbled upon. “Basically, he said, there’s nothing else like this on the market […]. The Japanese love the juxtaposition.” They liked the elegant Italian tailoring combined with the cool California lifestyle. McLoghlin never exactly planned this combination.

“It just soaks into your skin,” she observes of California coolness. When she arrived in L.A. from the more sartorially conservative East Coast, she moved to Venice Beach and hasn’t left.  She spends the little time she has away from her showroom there. “There’s a whole different sensibility of how you dress, what you wear to go to brunch. If you go to brunch in Charlotte, you probably wear a St. John’s suit. In L.A., you wear this gorgeous, expensive Italian shirt but it’s all wrinkled.” She people-watches in her Venice neighborhood for inspiration. “On weekends even, your brain never really even relaxes,” she says. “You see someone on the street and you have an idea. Maybe it’s a color or something else.”

If she has a chance to read and research, however, she delves not into fashion but into the business side of things. “I exclusively read entrepreneur biographies. I’m obsessed,” she says. Favorite subjects include Apple’s Steve Jobs and Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and she just finished the autobiography of designer Donna Karan, whom she’d previously considered an untouchable ’80s icon. “I can’t believe how honest and how raw she was,” McLoghlin muses of Karan. “It’s really humbling to be able to read other people’s stories and realize how painful the process was for them. I mean, they might have loved it, but there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears.”

She recalls the amount of time she spends navigating tax law, labor laws and accounting issues. “The fashion part is 5-10% of it. You have to be starting a business because you love business,” she says. “I love it.”

 

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YARA SAID: THE ARTIST IN EXILE

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

For Yara Said, the last 18 months have been epic. Leaving war-torn Syria in 2015 (alone, no less), she made her way across eastern Europe and over the treacherous Mediterranean. For weeks, she called tents, gymnasiums, and random office buildings her home, finally settling in Amsterdam, to reunite with friends, rekindle her art, and restart her life.

Then, last Summer, Yara was contacted by Refugee Nation, a New York based collective, championing the refugee Olympians at the Rio Summer Games. Yara was commissioned to design their official flag. And design it she did, bringing the kind of passion and directness she embodies.

I recently sat down with Yara to explore her plight and her work. Like a Syrian Lisbeth Salander, shrugging off any notion of can’t, Yara is the quintessential badass…

CHRIS BAHARA: Thank you for speaking with me, Let’s start with your new home. How did you get here? And Who did you come with?

YARA SAID: Like all other people, I joined the [migration]. The same route. From Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece. It was nine countries, I think.  At first I didn’t come with anyone. I’ve always been by myself.  For me it was just another thing I had to do.

CB: Any problems along the way?

YS: No. They’re my people.

CB: During your period of migration, was there a feeling of missing your art? Your work?

YS: I didn’t even think about it back then. When I was in the camps, yeah I had some [art] materials with me, but I couldn’t do anything. It was too constricting

CB: You’re now a part of Studio Yalla, a program for refugee artists here in Amsterdam. You have a great quote on their website: “What I need most is a place to create – to be surrounded with colors. Here I can get a glimpse of real freedom.”

YS: I think my studio is the only place I can ever be free… I think my studio is my home always.

CB: You designed the Olympic flag, representing refuges in the olympic’s, When and how did that come about?

YS: There was an initiative called I’m not a refugee. I’m a _____.  I can’t remember how I got into it – I always get into things. I wrote something for them. They put up a photo of me, and then lots of people contacted me through it.

That’s how Refugee Nation contacted me as well. They told me, “We found you  on I’m not a refugee… you said you were an artist. And we would like to work with you.” I had no idea what it would turn into.

CB: Were there others? Did you have to compete?

YS: No no. They just said “We just saw you on this initiative. We really like what you wrote. We have a feeling that this is going to work out.”  We had a Skype call, and the next day I was thinking about it. I read a little bit about Flag designing, and I read that a flag should look like a six-year-old kid designed it. That a six-year-old can draw it. I read it on the internet. Then I told them “Okay, I have an idea.”

CB: What was it like to see the refugee team draped in your flag at the Olympic games?

YS: I saw the guy from Congo, and he didn’t see his family for 18 years. It was very hard for me. I was very emotional. I just thought about these people and how they… I mean when things are put on you, you don’t think you’re like… someone special. You’re just a normal person. But when you see there’s a team of refugees going to the Olympics…

CB: The flag now hangs in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It’s almost like you got a certain amount of celebrity from the experience.

YS: It’s funny because it’s not actually like I came here to make money or start a new life. I came here to go to museums, and go to live concerts, and see Andy Warhol. And I had the opportunity to do this. I went to Warhol Exhibition. Banksy. Dali. Picasso. All my heroes. For me, this is how you live it. This is why it’s worth it to get on a boat and risk your life. I’m an artist. I would do anything for it.

CB: Do you sense any difference being a woman?  Respect as an artist? Respect for your voice?

YS: The art scene has always been masculine. This is all new – involving women more. I’m a feminist, so I keep up with it. Even the Museums before would have [perhaps featured] only one woman artist in their collection. Now the art scene has more. Of course it’s much nicer to live in Europe for a woman on some levels in general. But, I never had this I’m a Woman thing.

CB: Being from the United States, we are very removed from the refugee crisis. What message would you give to us? What would you like us to know?

YS: We the third world countries get so much from the United States.

YS: I mean with the States, you think Coca-Cola, Burger King, MTV, you know? Celebrities. Hollywood. People, they worship these things… And then you go there and it’s even worse there, with what’s happening with body image and the girls there…the shootings in schools. It’s horrible.

YS: What happened? The [old days] were  awesome!  I was reading a book [by] Patti Smith, Just Kids. It’s beautiful. And when you hear how she’s talking about liberty and what was happening, and demonstrations.  Real protests… Syria is happening now.  But no demonstrations in the US.

CB: What is your role as an artist toward the larger refugee experience?

YS: I think the most important thing is to speak up. And just tell people to let go of your ego. Do you know all this thing that people do is because of their ego? It’s because they think they’re better. Their ego tells them “This will never happen to [me]. because these people – look at them they have dark skin. They don’t speak English. [I’m] civilized. They’re not civilized.”  If they take away their ego… they can go and actually talk to these people.

CB: Maybe there is a lesson in your story. Having people see it and hear it. Through your voice – through your art.

YS: I’m going to do it until I die and that’s it. It’s the only thing that makes me.

 

 

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Chris Bahara is a writer profiling Human Rights and the Arts at MEANS Post.

 

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ANONYMOUS LETTER

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

The writer and subject of this essay has asked to be kept anonymous for the protection of her family. Our hope is that one day this won’t be necessary.

For any parent, I think we can all agree that when your child is born, the love you experience is overwhelming. You don’t really know them yet, but that doesn’t matter; the love is unconditional. As long as they are happy and healthy, that’s good for you. Of course, you catch yourself dreaming about who they might become, their character, their athletic prowess perhaps, but that soon fades, and again, I think we can all agree they are even better than what we imagined.

From the age of 2, our daughter refused to wear dresses and skirts. She always wanted to be the male character: the daddy, Ron from Harry Potter, the male superhero …

At the time I suppose we thought she was probably gay. She begged for boys’ underwear and boys’ swim trunks. When she started school, she requested a buzz cut and signed her name “Ryan” and “Michael.” But when she told me at the end of kindergarten that she had been going into the boys’ bathroom and peeing standing up in the urinals, I thought, “That’s something else.”

As I came to find out, gender identity and sexual orientation are two very different things—who knew? Certainly not my husband or me. My kid saying she’s a boy, behaving and dressing like a boy, knowing she’s a boy—that’s gender identity. I had a lot to learn.

When I was about 15, I remember watching an episode of Phil Donahue featuring four transsexual women. “Transsexual” was the word used then. Four transgender women talked about being born into the wrong body and said they felt much better going through life as women, and I remember thinking, “Why on earth would anyone choose that?” It was beyond my comprehension at the time. Now I know it’s not a choice.

When my daughter first began insisting that she was male, at age 6, I worried for her and blamed myself. Maybe I should have forced her to wear dresses and take ballet? Maybe I drank too much soy during pregnancy and accidentally screwed up her fetal hormones. Maybe if I were a stronger female role model? Maybe she was rejecting me …

I decided to find a therapist who knew something about gender identity. It took a bit of searching but eventually I found someone—a trans man. He listened to me and said: “You have another child, right? A little girl? If you think you did this to your kid, go home and make her a boy. Change her too.” That registered for me.

I began to research transgender identity and the implications on kids’ mental health. I learned that transgender kids who are not supported by their families have very high rates of suicide, mental health disorders, substance abuse and self-harm. According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey conducted in 2011, 41 percent of the more than 6,000 transgender or gender-nonconforming respondents had attempted suicide sometime in their lives. And those are just the people who survived to answer the survey. For parents of children like mine it means you are either going to have a transgender child or no child at all. For me that’s not a choice.

We transitioned our child from female to male in the third grade, changing pronouns from she to he. We changed his name too. Our local public school is in a progressive district, and when we asked them to hold trainings for students and staff on gender identity, they did. That was four years ago. His middle school experience, on the other hand, was far different. Kids who knew him from before told all the other kids he used to be a girl. He got teased and harassed.

Also, because he couldn’t use a urinal like other boys, he avoided using school bathrooms and held it all day. He stopped drinking liquids entirely and developed reoccurring urinary tract infections. Eventually the stress from the bullying caused sleep disturbances and depression. It was months before I got him to fess up and tell me what was going on. We pulled him out of school and enrolled him in a smaller middle school across town. None of the kids know he is transgender and he has friends now.

A couple months after starting at his new school, my son said, “Mommy, do you know what it’s like to keep a secret every single day? Do you know what it’s like going to school and not knowing if people will love you for who you are?” A nightmare for any parent to hear, when all any parent hopes is that when our kids walk out the front door the world will be nice and fair to them.

As the parent of a trans child I am hypervigilant. I know that our schools and communities are not set up to support kids like my son. I struggle when people tell me “You’re such an amazing parent” or “That must be so challenging. Your child is so lucky to have you.” Sometimes I think what they are really saying is “Thank God that’s not me. That must be so awful and hard.” More importantly, why am I an amazing parent for supporting my child? That’s what you do.

I spoke at a town meeting recently against a restrictive bathroom bill before the state senate and I left my job in community mental health to work with parents of kids like mine. I started to teach health and mental health providers about gender identity and how to support transgender patients. I never expected this to become my life’s work, or that my child would be my greatest teacher.

As parents, my husband and I are more optimistic for our child’s future than we were five years ago. Part of it is due to the changing perception in the media and also just getting to know transgender adults who are leading happy, fulfilling lives despite the enormous pressure to be like everyone else. Our son has fought hard to be who he is. He’s only 12, but he’s my hero.

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